Every class is unfit to govern.

The history of institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away.

The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food

The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.